iunie 07, 2016

Wittgenstein’s Handles

...'This utility of handles had also caught the attention of the
pioneering German sociologist Georg Simmel, but he thought utility was
only half the story. In his brilliant 1911 essay “The Handle,” Simmel
argued that the handle of a vase bridges two worlds, the
utilitarian and the non-utilitarian. A vessel, according to Simmel,
“unlike a painting or statue, is not intended to be insulated and
untouchable but is meant to fulfill a purpose—if only symbolically. For
it is held in the hand and drawn into the movement of practical life.”

Thus the vessel stands in two worlds at one and the same
time: whereas reality is completely irrelevant to the “pure” work of art
and, as it were, is consumed in it, reality does make claims upon the
vase as an object that is handled, filled and emptied, proffered, and
set down here and there. This dual nature of the vase is most decisively
expressed in its handle.'